MIA > Archive > Hyndman > Adventurous Life
As incidentally mentioned, through being interested in a mine in Utah of which I became a director, I got to know one of the brothers of the late and present Lord Stanley of Alderley very well, and through him became friends of the brilliant and charming Mrs. “Johnny” Stanley, afterwards better known as Lady Jenne and Lady St. Helier. The gift of establishing and keeping up a really interesting salon is one unfortunately not possessed by many English women. It needs an amount of tact, quickness, knowledge, and self-sacrifice which few possess or are ready, at any rate, to use in this direction. It is difficult to say in what the art consists of bringing men and women together of agreeable intelligence and of that indefinable social quality which wins others to them – sometimes possessed by those who are quite the reverse of clever – and intermingling them with people of less attractive personality and more combative natures, who, with a different hostess and amid other surroundings, might find meeting one another at close quarters by no means pleasant.
But whatever the faculty may be, Lady St. Helier, at the time I speak of, possessed it in a very high degree. Beginning on a small scale, with frequent gatherings of more or less intimate friends, her circle gradually extended, until, without ever arriving at the disagreeable point where a harmonious coterie degenerates into an indifferent crush, there could be met at Lady St. Helier’s house in Wimpole Street, and afterwards in Harley Street, many of the most distinguished men and women of politics and letters of the period. I have always been disinclined to write about such little meetings of friends and acquaintances, and I should not do so now, with our hostess of that day still happily living and as clever and vivacious as ever, had she not kindly given me her permission. The width of her sympathies may have been somewhat restricted since, but shortly before her marriage with the late Lord St. Helier, she sat up quite late one night at our house singing Jacobin songs of the old time, in alternation with revolutionary ditties from Prince Kropotkin, having quite possibly listened earlier in the day to the animated conversation of an ultra-Conservative like Lord Halsbury.
Of the catholicity of the company in her own salon, some idea may be formed when I say that statesmen and politicians, men of letters and journalists, of the most diverse views, were constantly to be found sitting at her table or conversing in her drawing-room. In the very hottest of the exceedingly hot days of the blazing Irish controversy, even Mr. Parnell and Mr. “Buckshot” Forster were to be seen at her private receptions; though I admit their visits were so conveniently arranged that the possibility of their encountering one another on the staircase or in the drawing-room was dexterously rendered very remote. And the period I speak of, from 1876 to 1888, was a very stirring time indeed. First the Russo-Turkish War created a good deal of bad blood, and then the bitter Land League and Home Rule struggles in Ireland evoked an amount of ill feeling quite unequalled since. It takes me back to another and quite a different world, to the days when I had not, as some of my old friends humorously say, given myself over to riotous living, to think of Madame Novikoff at the height of her influence and notoriety – Mr. Gladstone having just walked out from a great Bulgarian Atrocities meeting with this famous Russian nationalist on his arm – seated at the piano, singing none too well, with three Tory Cabinet Ministers standing beside her and one of them turning over the pages of her music.
Sir Theodore Martin, I recall, declined to make that lady’s acquaintance, very politely, but very decidedly. I asked him why he had no desire to know a person who then was so much to the front in the political world. “Well,” he replied, “my position is rather a peculiar one. I do not say for a moment that the lady is not perfectly loyal and discreet, and I am not in the least afraid of what we may say to one another. But I shrink from the idea of any, let us say, misunderstanding, by which something I have never uttered may appear in a language I do not comprehend, and then come back here as my sober opinion. I have no right to run such a risk.” As Sir Theodore held at the time a confidential position at the Court, I suppose he was right. I had no reason for similar hesitation, and I became acquainted with this well-known successor to the famous Madame de Lieven. But whether Madame Novikoff was out of sorts when I chatted with her, or she did not think it worth her while to display her brilliancy to me, I am bound to say I found her rather dull.
It was, as I say, however, a remarkable collection of people who used to meet at Lady St. Helier’s. Robert Browning and Lecky, Fitzjames Stephen and Maine, Whistler and Lowell, Greenwood and Henley, Oscar Wilde and Justin M’Carthy, Joseph Chamberlain, Randolph Churchill, Lord Iddesleigh and Sir William Harcourt, Lady Dorothy Nevill, Mrs. Proctor and Lady Bancroft were habitual visitors at 37 Wimpole Street.
It is a little strange now to recall that Oscar Wilde first made his appearance in London as a cultured and rather supercilious exponent of eccentricity in dress and demeanour, and was regarded by those who did not know him, as well by those whom he did not know, as little better than a confirmed self-advertiser and self-idolator, with a tendency towards buffoonery. But any one who probed a little deeper soon discovered that he had to do with an uncommonly clever man, who adopted these queer manners and sun-flower disguises, merely in order to attract attention and to gain a hearing for himself; just as a really capable and original young painter will be guilty of exhibiting some startling piece, of whose drawbacks he is quite conscious, solely for the purpose of getting an opportunity later of displaying his real talent.
That was the judgment I formed of Oscar Wilde very early in our acquaintance, and his brilliant performances in literature and on the stage were no surprise to me. I never knew him well, however, though I was often in his company and conversed with him. But I never saw any one so completely destroyed by success. All the bad features of his character seemed to develop at once and to show in his face. With more wit and a much deeper view of life than his follower, Bernard Shaw, his inclination to self-indulgence and vice was not kept under control by his intelligence, and I think the saddest thing I have known in the literary world was the rapid downfall of the author of The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and De Profundis. I think on the whole the most spontaneously witty thing ever uttered in English was what Wilde is reported to have said to that ingenious poetaster, Sir Lewis Morris, the author of The Epic of Hades, when the latter was complaining bitterly to him of the conspiracy of silence maintained against his claims to the poet-laureateship. “It is a complete conspiracy of silence against me, a conspiracy of silence. What ought I to do, Oscar?” “Join it,” replied Wilde. Strange evidence of our national incapacity to disassociate intellectual work from moral character: when one of Wilde’s plays was to be represented after his deplorable downfall strong protest was raised on grounds of public morality!
The first time I met Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was at Lady St. Helier’s. He was then the Joseph Chamberlain of “ransom,” and was, of course, particularly strong on the land question, and Irish land being the problem of the hour, on “fair rents.” As luck would have it the land confiscator and the Socialist sat together in the drawing-room, and this interminable land discussion came up. Mr. Chamberlain was always given to laying down the law on any subject which he had taken up, and fair rents was the matter which he then knew all there was to know about and a little more. There were some large landowners present and a sharp discussion went on.
Mr. Chamberlain pushed his fair-rent theory as far as he could. I could stand it no longer and plunged in by saying that all depended upon what was meant by the word “fair.” Under a competitive system of land tenure there was no more certain way of establishing fair rents than there was of determining what constituted fair wages. What was fair in one case might not be fair in another, and the whole problem worked down to what was a fair standard of life, or even as to whether the actual producers and distributors need consider anybody but themselves. Mr. Chamberlain would not accept my view at all and even got a little angry because I would not be convinced as to the correctness of his theories. Other conversation ceased, as sometimes will happen, and all around us, men and women, were listening to this discussion, so unusual in a fashionable drawing-room. I put the historical part of the story in as light a fashion as I could; but, light as it might be, it was too heavy for Mr. Chamberlain who, obviously, had never studied these questions at all. This was apparent to everybody, and Mr. Chamberlain, his pistol having missed fire, tried to knock me down with the butt-end. Well – it was all very amusing to the bystanders, who, naturally enough, were not displeased to see the anti-landlord and the more logical Socialist at variance. The moral of the argument was summed up later by a wealthy and prominent politician of many broad acres who was present. It was put to him by the lady of the house that, if Mr. Chamberlain’s “ransom” views succeeded, he should join the Conservatives. “No,” was his answer, “about that time I shall be wanting a little revenge, and I shall join Mr. Hyndman!” This was long ago; but for years afterwards when I chanced to meet any of those who were in at this little encounter they would say, “Do you remember when Mr. Chamberlain and you,” etc. etc.
But Mr. Chamberlain was generally unfortunate in these excursions of his into the domain of agrarian economics. The following incident occurred to a very old friend of mine, at one time a leading Colonial politician, who has frequently represented his Colony on important occasions. A dinner was given in my friend’s honour at Birmingham, with the Mayor of Birmingham in the Chair, Mr. Chamberlain, then Colonial Minister, sitting on his left hand and my friend as guest of the evening on his right. Again the land. Said Mr. Chamberlain sententiously: – “The very best Act I know dealing with the land question is one passed in the Colony of Victoria which,” and he proceeded to deal at some length with the provisions of the Act which he so strongly approved, and in particular with one section and clause that in his judgment were of supreme importance. My friend mildly suggested that neither the Act as a whole, nor the clause as a part of it bore out the interpretation Mr. Chamberlain put upon them. Mr. Chamberlain would not hear of any possibility of modification.
My friend courteously but firmly upheld his opinion. Mr. Chamberlain then said it was out of the question that, holding the position he did, and with the very best information at his disposal, he could be mistaken, in fact, his decision on the point must be accepted as final. After a little more fencing my friend was forced to this: – “I am very sorry,” addressing the Mayor by name – it was Sir Something Elkington, I believe – “I am very sorry to be obliged to say what I am about to say, and I tried to avoid doing so, but I think you will admit yourself that I have been driven to it by Mr. Chamberlain’s own statements. The Act upon which Mr. Chamberlain has been commenting was drafted by me, and as I piloted it through the Victorian Assembly it is generally known as my Act. Not only do not the provisions of it bear out Mr. Chamberlain’s views, but as a matter of fact the Courts of Law have decided in the sense in which the Act was originally drawn and which I have put here just now.”
Another anecdote told me by Frederick Greenwood himself shows the same strange disposition on the part of Mr. Chamberlain to see only what he wished to see on a much more serious issue. Mr. Chamberlain, Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Morley and Mr. Greenwood were dining in the Strangers’ Room of the Reform Club in May 1899, when matters in South Africa were approaching a serious crisis. The question of war or peace hung in the balance. Mr. Chamberlain could, and eventually did, decide which it should be. “If,” said he, “I could be sure of public opinion behind me, I would have war in a fortnight.” The others present expressed their disapproval of such a view of the matter, and regarded a war in South Africa against the Boers as a very dangerous and doubtful enterprise indeed. “Not at all,” was the answer of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, “the whole thing would be a matter of three months, and would cost about £12,000,000.” At that moment Mr. Chamberlain was posing in public as a seeker after peace, and the reports of General Sir William Butler and of the military officials of the Intelligence Department specially appointed to investigate were before him. Greenwood told me this story precisely as I recount it.
At one time I believed Mr. Chamberlain really did mean to go in seriously for social reconstruction, in spite of his strange economic mistakes about the land, and possibly my impression to that effect was confirmed by the fact that when I went down to Cambridge to open a Debate at the Union on Socialism and proposed an out-and-out Socialist resolution, his son, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, then an undergraduate at my old college, went with me into the lobby on the Socialist side. If he had done this instead of devoting himself to an aggressive and disastrous Imperialism in Africa and to Tariff Reform at home he would have served his country much better and would have gained a far higher reputation for himself.
A long conversation I had with Lady Dorothy Nevill at the period I refer to made a great impression upon me, and I think it gives a very true and telling statement of the attitude of “the cleverest aristocratic class in the world” towards social and political developments in this country. “You are making a very great mistake, Mr. Hyndman,” this lady was good enough to say, “in devoting yourself to Socialism.”
“We believe you to be honest in what you are doing, because we have offered you all a man can hope to get in this country, and you have not chosen to take it. But you will never succeed, at any rate in your own lifetime. We have had an excellent innings, I don’t deny that for a moment: an excellent innings, and the turn of the people will come some day. I see that quite as clearly as you do. But not yet, not yet. You will educate some of the working class, that is all you can hope to do for them. And when you have educated them we shall buy them, or, if we don’t, the Liberals will, and that will be just the same for you.
“Besides, we shall never offer any obstinate or bitter resistance to what is asked for. When your agitation becomes really serious we shall give way a little, and grant something of no great importance, but sufficient to satisfy the majority for the time being. Our object is to avoid any direct conflict in order to gain time. This concession will gain, let us say, ten years: it won’t be less. Then at the expiration of that period you will have worked up probably another threatening demonstration on the part of the masses against what you call the class monopoly of the means and instruments of production. We shall meet you in quite an equitable and friendly spirit and again surrender a point from which we all along meant to retire, but which we have defended with so much vigour that our resistance has seemed to be quite genuine, and our surrender has for your friends all the appearance of triumph. Yet another ten years are thus put behind us, and once more you start afresh with, whatever you may expect to-day, a somewhat disheartened and disintegrated array. Once more we meet you with the same tactics of partial surrender and pleasing procrastination. But now, remember, thirty years have passed and you have another generation to deal with, to stir up, and educate, whilst, if I may venture to say so, you yourself will not be so young nor perhaps quite so hopeful as you are to-day. Not yet, Mr. Hyndman, your great changes will not come yet, and in the meanwhile you will be engaged on a very thankless task indeed. Far better throw in your lot with men whom you know and like, and do your best to serve the people whom you wish to benefit from the top instead of from the bottom.”
I have always thought this one of the keenest and cleverest summaries of the course of events in this strange conservative country ever uttered, and I consider it shows, as clearly as can be shown, how the aristocracy here has contrived to maintain its position and authority when aristocracies in other countries have so largely failed. Lady Dorothy herself can scarcely have imagined she was so accurately forecasting the course of events. A quarter of a century has passed since this utterance, and it seems to me the aristocracy, to say nothing of the capitalists, have given way considerably less than Lady Dorothy herself believed they were prepared to surrender.
How much manner and deliberately cultivated courtesy has to do with personal success in the world. There was Sir Richard Burton, for instance, by far the greatest traveller and geographical and ethnological student of his time. I never met him but that I was astonished at the depth and range of his knowledge. Moreover his pre-eminence in his own line was universally admitted. Yet what success he achieved was all against the collar, and he never attained to anything like the position to which his abilities and performances entitled him, while far inferior men walked into berths ahead of him. His comparative failure from the worldly point of view was due, so it is said, to the fact that he was apt to treat mediocrities, even if occupying high posts, with little consideration for their feelings, and that his criticism of the mistakes of his nominal superiors was apt to be more caustic and telling than delicate. It is certain in any case that Sir Richard never held the official position to which his abilities and remarkable achievements entitled him. When I met him he was a disappointed man who had seen persons who were inferior to himself in every respect put over his head, and who was besides in no enviable case pecuniarily.
He showed, however, nothing of this in his manner or conversation on ordinary occasions. He was the broadest and deepest man of his height I ever encountered, though I had seen some magnificent specimens of his build out West. Sitting at the dining table he almost required two places, and I noticed on one occasion that he had a most singular habit of looking quickly every few minutes, first over one shoulder, and then over the other, as if he expected to be attacked from behind. Meeting him one evening at the house of the great Arabian scholar, Dr. Badger, he talked very freely indeed. We were seated after dinner in a large room in the basement, Burton and Badger smoking long Turkish pipes, the tobacco in which, after having been lighted by a glowing charcoal disc from the fire, passed through the hubble-bubble and a long stem to the mouth. I could never handle this contrivance artistically and confined my smoking to the less complicated cigar. But they both seemed to enjoy the narghile hugely, and Burton became very frank and communicative. Referring to his travels in Africa I asked him about H.M. Stanley, when he said: “The impression of my old Arab merchants on the coast and their men is that Stanley never went to some of the places he said he visited at all, and if half I have heard about him is true, I should have been very sorry to be one of his party. I might not have been sitting safely here now. But there are a good many tales told about travellers over and above the travellers’ tales they tell themselves. I have suffered from some of them myself,” and he laughed a great laugh. Then he and Badger took to talking Arabic at the top of their voices, till I thought the house would come down upon us all. A tremendous man possessed of encyclopedic information, that was the impression the famous Richard Burton produced upon me.
I began this reference to Burton, however, solely by way of illustration of the failure of a brilliant man of a very different career to attain to the summit of his ambition to which he was fully entitled. This was due to a faculty he had in common with Burton, that of unnecessarily making enemies of people who might be useful to him, or who might at least interfere with his projects. I am bound to say I admired Sir William Harcourt. The imprudent way he played his political game, and the imprudent things he said and did, would have hopelessly wrecked a man of less ability. He resolutely posed as a political swash-buckler, though I could never see that he had nearly so much of the Dugald Dalgetty character as some of his colleagues, who ever lived in the odour of political sanctity. I regret to say I once got into a very awkward mess with him, which was the more annoying to me that I have throughout my life been exceedingly careful never under any circumstances to print any rash things which are said in private conversation. This of course. To do otherwise is to break every rule of the game. However, as the story was made public at the time, there is no harm in repeating it now.
I was talking to Sir William Harcourt, and said that; in, my opinion, there was at the time a good deal of stir among the people, which, if any opportunity arose, might give rise to serious trouble. “Well” said Sir William, ,” it may be so, but for my part I don’t believe in any great popular discontent until I hear of ricks on fire and factories in flames.” This was said in quite an off-hand way, and naturally meant nothing. Unfortunately for me I repeated the remark to a friend and member of our party, who apparently was less scrupulous about such matters than I am, and the next thing in connection with it was I saw the phrase published in a letter to the Times. It was outrageous, and I felt much annoyed at it at the time. Nowadays it does not matter, and that Sir William did take the view he expressed there is no doubt.
What an interesting interview that must have been which took place, just before Lord Randolph Churchill came to the front in the Tory Party, when Sir William Harcourt went down to stay the week-end at Hughenden. What a splendid subject for an imaginary conversation. Ill-natured people said he went for the purpose of negotiating a change of sides in the House of Commons, which I don’t believe a bit. But the visit gave rise to at any rate one good story which likewise I consider to be wholly apocryphal. Sir William Harcourt formed a very high opinion of Lord Beaconsfield when on this visit, and always spoke of him very well afterwards. On the other hand, there were those who declared that the Tory leader did not reciprocate these feelings of admiration, but on being asked what he thought of his guest said, “He ought to go very far, very far indeed, for he has no scruples whatsoever to restrain him.” However that may be, Sir William ought to have gone so far indeed, as to be Prime Minister, and it was a great misfortune for his party that he didn’t.
But here is where the similarity of character to Sir Richard Burton came in. He made no attempt to ingratiate himself with the heavy money-bags of the party, some of whom thought themselves of very great importance. Here his innate aristocratic arrogance did him a mischief. He damned them all and sundry, with an impartiality worthy of the highest praise. Mr. Henry Labouchere told me that an influential and wealthy Liberal called him aside one day in the House and asked him what could be the matter with Harcourt. “Do you know he actually damned my eyes just now?” “Did he really?” said Labouchere sympathetically; “and are they any the worse for it?” On another occasion, not being properly supported as he thought when he was speaking from the front bench, he turned round and said to those behind him, “Damn you, you fellows, why don’t you cheer?” These anathemas, it appears, told against him at the critical moment when the succession to the Premiership hung in the balance, and the objurgated plutocrats rallied to Lord Rosebery’s side to a man. Nevertheless, Sir William Harcourt, with all his rashness, would have done much better as Prime Minister than the Scotch Whig Peer, as he was one of the very small band of lawyers who have ever been of real service as politicians in the House of Commons.
During the period these random observations deal with I was constantly in receipt of information which was not commonly accessible, and was able to astonish those who ought to have been better, or at least thought they ought to have been better, posted than myself. But that was not so strange as may appear now, regard being had to the opportunities put at my disposal from more than one quarter. What, however, did surprise me was that our Foreign Office, notwithstanding the shock of 1870, was in no closer touch with the actual course of events than it was at that sinister date; and I have my reasons for thinking matters are not very much better now.
To this day I have never been able to obtain any explanation of the incident I now relate. At the date I speak of, M. Léon Gambetta had constituted a Ministry of which he was the head. It was a great triumph for Republicanism and anti-Clericalism, and Gambetta made no secret of the fact that he wished to be on good terms with Great Britain; indeed there seemed every prospect of an entente cordiale being established similar to that which has been happily arranged to-day. There was a general good feeling between the two countries, and arrangements were come to which practically rendered certain a continuous agreement in relation to Egypt, the most prickly question, with the exception perhaps of the Newfoundland Fisheries, then open between the two Governments. All this was very satisfactory, so far as it went, even though the European domination of Egypt was not a good feature of the understanding; and Sir Charles Dilke, who was virtually our Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, deserved and received great credit for the good relations he was instrumental in bringing about and strengthening.
It so chanced that one evening I met a very close friend of Sir Charles Dilke, and he expressed to me the satisfaction which was universally felt, and which he was sure I shared, at the great improvement in the public feeling on both sides of the Channel. He also remarked upon the immense advantage it was that we should have a genuine Republican of the highest ability and patriotism, a vigorous man and a great orator in the prime of life, as probably the virtual chief of the French Republic for many years. “But,” I said, “I am afraid you are quite mistaken, and that M. Gambetta’s position is by no means so secure as you suppose. In fact, it is not too much to state that at this very moment he has made up his mind that he cannot continue to hold office, and will be out of power within a very few weeks.” “Oh,” replied my interlocutor, “you always have some strange and impossible news, Mr. Hyndman. I am satisfied, on what is the best authority in this country, that you are completely mistaken, and that never was the situation in France more secure, or was it more certain that the arrangements made between the two countries will be carried out.”
I was a little nettled, I confess, and replied that .my information might at times seem strange, but that in nearly every case it had proved to be correct, and that this most certainly would prove to be no exception to the rule. I then went on to explain M. Gambetta’s position and tactics: “Whether M. Gambetta has been to Germany, as some say he has, to see Prince Bismarck or not, and this I do not pretend to be able to determine, it is quite certain he finds the whole international situation so complicated and so dangerous that he feels that he, of all men, is perhaps the least capable of handling it to the advantage of his country, unless he has the powers of a Parliamentary dictatorship virtually accorded to him. It is indispensable for him to win the victory, therefore, in this struggle between scrutin de liste and scrutin d’arrondissement, which you thoroughly understand. If Gambetta were to obtain scrutin de liste, he could certainly have the political power and prestige which he holds to be essential, and then he would do his utmost to develop the policy which he has sketched out and is ready to fill in. But he knows perfectly well that scrutin d’arrondissement will be carried against him, so he is riding for a fall which he is quite certain to get. This is exactly the situation.”
”You must excuse me,” was the polite reply, “if I cannot, knowing what I know here, quite accept your exposition, and I need scarcely say I hope it is not a correct statement. I have no doubt you feel the same about that.” Three weeks later I met the same gentleman again at Lady St. Helier’s. He looked at me as if I were somebody uncanny, and tried, I thought, to keep out of my way, a manoeuvre in which I did not let him succeed. The reason for this avoidance was that M. Gambetta had just resigned, and there had appeared in M. Gambetta’s own paper precisely the explanation of the causes of his retirement, which I had given to my eminent acquaintance at our previous interview. He admitted, when I got hold of him, that I had been only too accurate in my forecast, and added that his friends, meaning Sir Charles Dilke and others, were as much mistaken as himself, hinting, indeed, that Gambetta had not used them well.
Now comes the moral in this particular case. I had no special or secret information whatever. I knew nothing that any Englishman, who had made any name for himself on the Continent at all, could not have learned just as easily as I did myself. Certainly, I was very anxious to know how matters stood with the French Ministry; whether M. Gambetta felt he could face and overcome the bitter opposition to which he was subjected, and whether, above all, the friendly arrangements between England and France would be carried out, especially in relation to Egypt. Probably I might even have obtained what I wanted from M. Gambetta himself. But as I was strolling along the Boulevard I met a very old French political friend who was generally well up in what was going on. “Far better than my telling you anything about it, if you have the time to spare,” he said in answer to my question, “we will look in and see M. Spüller. I am going that way and we will call at the République Française, then we shall get the news direct from headquarters.” M. Spüller was the editor of the République Française and Gambetta’s most intimate confidant. To make a long story short, M. Spüller received us at once, when my friend sent up his name, and gave us quite frankly the explanation of M. Gambetta’s policy which I repeated later. Consequently, I feel the British Government ought not to have been taken by surprise when M. Gambetta went out of office. But they were, and afterwards we drifted into a war against a people “rightly struggling to be free.”
Among others whom I met at this time were W.E.H. Lecky and W.E. Henley. It is impossible to imagine a greater contrast between two men. Lecky, tall, thin and gaunt, with shoulders that seemed scarcely broader than his tapering head and looking as if his clothes were always just about to slip off him, cool, well-read and philosophical except on one subject – Home Rule – he was quite the typical man of the study who had just stepped out of it to blink at society and the world. Interesting in his works, less attractive in his conversation. On the other hand, Henley, broken and battered, able only to hobble along with difficulty, with his powerful eager face, talking even of subjects he knew well with a vigour and a combativeness as if he had made a first-hand acquaintance with them but yesterday. Admiring and praising physical power and fitness of body for their own sake, as I have observed even men of strong minds do who are themselves enfeebled at birth or by accident, probably there was no editor of his day who had such a galvanic influence upon able young writers who were brought in contact with him. I have met some of those who worked for him, and one and all they talk as if Henley, though a most arbitrary chief, first showed them what they were capable of doing, and they speak of him with respect and affection to this day. Rudyard Kipling himself first became known to fame as a writer of vigorous verse by his contributions to the Scottish, afterwards the National Observer. Mr. Henley told me how Kipling’s Tommy this and Tommy that and Tommy mind your soul came to him through the ordinary post, and said half-sadly, “but I shall never get any more in that way now.”
But Mr. Henley and his band of intellectual physical-force men never became popular with the general public. They told their side of the truth too plainly, not to say too “brutally,” and in too literary a form for general acceptance. There is no wide public in this island for great ability in letters unless it is spiced up with smart paradox, or is watered down to a School Board strength. But Mr. Henley did good service. He had pluck, initiative and appreciation and, if he not unfrequently overplayed his role, the qualities which he exhibited in doing so were sufficiently rare and admirable in these days to win for him permanent regard. In prose and in verse he did his best to be as strong intellectually as he would have liked to be physically, and if there is here and there a sense of strain in his efforts, that is no more than to say that he did not quite attain the high level towards which he strove. And as I am myself a strong anti-Imperialist, this is a good deal for me personally to say about such a vehement opponent.
It may seem a little odd to those who have only known or heard of me for more than a quarter of a century as a pestilent agitator and sanguinary revolutionist, to learn that within that period the Ambassador of one of the great powers to St. James’s should have thought it worth his while to call upon me to endeavour to persuade me to give up my Socialist propaganda and accept the proposals made to me to take an active part in the political work of the Conservative Party. But so it was. He was very persistent, likewise, in his efforts to induce me to abandon what he considered a hopeless cause, and “make myself useful” in my day and generation. His arguments were those with which I had become by that time familiar, but they were urged from a somewhat different and unusual point of view and enforced by an illustration which, for me at least, had the merit of novelty.
“We have met several times, Mr. Hyndman, and I have come to see you thus privately and informally and shall hope to come again in order to beg you not to wreck your career and waste your life by devoting yourself to endeavours in which you cannot possibly hope to succeed. Great opportunities for being really useful lie before you, and it will be sheer madness on your part if you throw them away in favour of chasing a mere will-o’-the-wisp. I am a much older man than you are and I have been a Socialist myself. In fact, if you were to ask me what I think to-day I should tell you I am quite convinced that Socialism is naturally and inevitably the next stage in the development of the human race. But it will not come in my time or in yours. Meanwhile these unrealisable ideals will absorb your energies, dissipate your fortune and wear out your life. On the other hand, if you are reasonable, cease to be a fanatic, or even an enthusiast, and take a practical view of things, you will be able to serve your country in a department into which party politics do not or at any rate ought not to enter, where your very indifference to party will be advantageous, and where you will be able to help on the peaceful development even of Socialism more than you can ever hope to do as a private individual.”
When I remarked in reply to his argument that this was all very well and that I felt grateful for the interest he took in me, but that having put my hand to the plough I could scarcely in justice to those who had joined me in the struggle look back; that, farther, there was no probability of arresting the manifest decay which was setting in throughout the population of this island unless a resolute Socialist party were formed and kept vigorously at work, he said sarcastically:
“That is mere philanthropy, the vice of the sentimental and incapable. You do not really believe what you are saying. The basic theories of Socialism are not in themselves philanthropic except in so far as they sketch out and help on a more complete development, and that, as I have said, is yet many generations ahead of us; besides, pardon me for saying so, the realisation of that happy, and, if you like, glorious period will not be materially hastened by anything you can do. That you will not gain any gratitude by what you are attempting is already quite certain. This you do not expect, you say. Men are never grateful and the advocacy of Socialism is sufficient reward in itself. Beautiful! But you do not get any farther than you were before. No, no, if you want to be really philanthropic on those lines, don’t try to improve the race of men: that is a mere chimera under existing conditions. Improve the breed of pigs, Mr. Hyndman, improve the breed of pigs. If you resolutely refuse to employ your abilities in the service of your country give the whole thing up, turn farmer and improve the breed of pigs. In that way you will do far more good for your fellowmen than by exhausting yourself, and preparing a disappointed old age, by preaching Socialism.”
I saw this well-known diplomatist several times afterwards, but he at last was driven to think he had to deal with a downright lunatic, because I did not follow his advice. Perhaps he was right.
Lord Iddesleigh, better known as Sir Stafford Northcote, followed on the same side. He knew my father very well at Eton and his eldest son had been at a private tutor’s and at Oxford with my brother Hugh, so with him also I was well acquainted. Meeting Lord Iddesleigh frequently in Wimpole Street I got to know him too very well myself, and he was likewise kind enough to show an interest in my career. Taking my wife down to dinner one evening, he impressed upon her the necessity for not allowing me to throw away my life upon the barren field of Socialist agitation, telling her that I could not possibly succeed in what I had undertaken, whereas, on other lines, I might hope to do, so he was pleased to say, great things. But I had quite resolved, as the French put it, to accomplish the impossible, and persisted in throwing myself into the full stream of revolutionary agitation.
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Last updated on 30.7.2006